2016’s Voyageurs Cup final game was one for the books. By this, I mean it tore out the hearts of Vancouver Whitecaps fans and laughed at them as they died. This is what the Voyageurs Cup is for. Since its formation in 2002 the Whitecaps have, more often than not, enjoyed a long series of wide-awake nightmares. The same applies for fans of FC Edmonton, and to a lesser extent every team that isn’t the Montreal Impact. The Voyageurs Cup is wonderful and it is horrible, like eating a pound of bacon for breakfast.

In honour of this latest addition to the pantheon of misery, I thought I’d compile my list of the top ten most horrifying defeats since the beginning of the Canadian Championship in 2008. (Why not the beginning of the Voyageurs Cup in 2002? Partially because I don’t remember that far, partially because few teams cared, and mostly because I will be getting quite nerdy enough without dragging in Mesut Mert and the 2004 Calgary Mustangs.)

I am, of course, biased. As an ex-Whitecaps and now-FC Edmonton fan, you will notice these teams prominent on this list. All I can say is that I honestly believe they have had the bulk of the blackness. From another point of view these moments of agony will be moments of triumph. Soccer is a zero-sum game and one man’s collapse is another’s miracle. But let’s face it, happiness is not in the Voyageurs Cup spirit. Losing feels much worse than winning feels good, and it’s the bad beats that have always defined this tournament. Or maybe that’s the westerner in me.

Very early indeed this morning, your friend and mine Michael McColl published over at AFTN Canada a post explaining his opinion that MLS has no obligations to Canadian soccer[1]. As someone whose opinion notoriously runs the other way, I have been called out to reply. I will oblige.

I do not mean to address McColl’s preference for club over country; that’s personal. (And he’s Scottish so, y’know, he’s responding to the incentives he’s got.) What I’m discussing is his argument that the Canadian MLS teams have no responsibility, and should have no responsibility, to develop Canadian talent.

These sorts of arguments always come down to two things: GIT DAT MONEY and WIN DOZE GAMEZ. Weird things for supporters to say. We all want our team to win, obviously, but that’s clearly not the most important thing: if it was we’d all cheer for Bayern Münich. We certainly wouldn’t be fans of the MLS Vancouver Whitecaps, a team proud of barely finishing in the top half twice in four years. There’s got to be something beyond numbers on a spreadsheet that keeps us coming to the park week in, week out. This is, in fact, the point.

And then there’s the financial argument. “Did Canada put any money into the MLS teams?!” Well, as it happens, yeah[2]. These self-sacrificing MLS team owners who only want to turn a wee little profit have by no means paid their own way. In terms of dollars and cents the Canadian public has bought a right to demand something from our MLS clubs. But it doesn’t matter.

If professional clubs are meant to be just another company then there’s no reason for them to ever have a single fan. You don’t see people going around wearing Telus shirts saying “yeah, they’ve been my phone company since I was a kid.” Even I don’t do that, and my dad works for Telus. In Vancouver you more commonly get people protesting corporations they feel put profit ahead of community. The entire business model of professional sports requires that we devote ourselves to an idea higher than any corporate interest: as fans we are entitled to demand something in exchange.

Why should we, as fans, give a hoot about franchise fees? We’re not shareholders in the Montreal Impact or the Vancouver Whitecaps. (You might be an investor in Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment I guess.) I have no objection to Canadian soccer teams making money; in fact, I hope they do. But I’m not going to ignore everything that should turn a mere franchise into my club so Joey Saputo can have more caviar in his luxury suite.

Of course, nobody wants Canada’s professional teams to go broke. Look at the Whitecaps of the mid-2000s: playing Canadians for 20,000 minutes a season they won league championships[3]. Pretty sure they went utterly bankrupt. Pretty sure that’s what happened. If they routinely sold out Swangard Stadium, had a captain from Vancouver Island, and a bevy of beloved, successful local players, somebody would have mentioned it.

Or the Montreal Impact of that era. Routinely in the top of the table, the “least Canadian team in domestic professional soccer” which would make them the most Canadian team in MLS by miles, a bunch of long-term players and the occasional native son on a star turn like Ali Gerba. I seem to recall that they wound up building a soccer-specific stadium, won a dozen Voyageurs Cups, and got deep in a CONCACAF Champions League while drawing formidable crowds… but that’s probably a pot-induced hallucination. Next you’ll tell me that even the Toronto Lynx, who were an advertisement for how not to run a professional soccer team, are still around in USL PDL. Everyone knows that playing Canadians makes you broke. That’s why, when a long-forgotten MLS franchise named Toronto FC was founded with a high Canadian quota in place and they lost most of their games, the team plunged into obscurity and team owner Mr. MLSE can now be found outside Union Station giving handies for pocket change.

But isn’t it true that the biggest soccer nations in the world don’t do this sort of navel-gazing? Look, as McColl urges us, at the foreigner-replete Spanish La Liga, English Premier League, and Italian Serie A! They don’t demand a proportion of Spanish or English or Italian players and they’re doing great! (This amounts to saying “these countries are in the European Union”; it is difficult legally to rule out European foreigners in these countries. La Liga restricts non-EU players but can’t restrict non-Spaniards.)

These are three of the strongest leagues in the world: not exactly comparable to a podunk salary-capped regional league. Besides, as McColl ought to have known, England is plagued by just this problem, despite domestic representation that would make a Canadian jump for joy: the Football Association’s tightening work permit rules are one attempt at a solution[4]. And what of Germany? The world’s top soccer league requires a high proportion of homegrown players on a team’s roster, and their football association sets strict standards and demands heavy investment in youth academies[5]. The Germans, I shouldn’t need to tell you, have enjoyed some success with this approach.

In Australia, a country comparable to Canada in many ways, the A-League restricts teams to a maximum of five imports, a number that’s actually going down[6]. The result? The A-League has ten teams, nine in Australia proper (population 24 million), international television coverage, and a fast-rising salary cap. Their national team has moved to the tougher Asian region for more of a challenge and A-League-developed players like Mitchell Langerak, Joshua Brillante, and Robbie Kruse have joined some of the world’s top teams. If only we had Australia’s problems. Nor is their approach unusual: leagues in Russia, Japan, South Korea, and other strong countries have adopted increasingly strict pro-domestic rules.

Yeah, the men’s national team only plays a few times a year (and never in Vancouver). Yeah, it’s incompetent. Yeah, over the years the Canadian Soccer Association hasn’t been able to find its ass with a 15-page PDF titled “Roadmap to Canada’s Ass 2025”. That’s not the point. The Canadian national teams don’t represent the CSA, they represent us, the people of Canada. They are eleven men or women who unify us from Victoria to St. John’s. They are the apex of what we can hope to achieve: five MLS Cups in Vancouver wouldn’t add up to the world-wide attention and the domestic hope from a single Canadian World Cup appearance.

Telling us our MLS teams should ignore that so they can make more money is an offense to the entire concept of supporting a club.

Maple Leaf Forever! is not a widely-read blog. I would be surprised if it breaks the top twenty of Canadian soccer columns by hits. I’m just one jackass in his apartment reeling off opinions on subjects he cannot fully understand and the community knows that. However, even in my obscurity I put pride in accuracy and honest information, and therefore I owe my readers an apology.

I apologize for implying, in my posts over the past several weeks, that the 2014 Voyageurs Cup is an honest competition well worth the attention of the casual fan. This was grievously in error.

I apologize for railing against Major League Soccer’s fundamental dishonesty in this space, while ignoring the Canadian Soccer Association’s sins. I have no excuse. The 2009 Voyageurs Cup, in which Toronto FC, coincidentally the highest-profile team, hoisted a Voyageurs Cup they did not earn. The 2012 Cup, in which the same thing happened. The 2014 Cup, now. And I remember, even if many don’t, how in 2011 MLS Vancouver got every call against then-NASL Montreal to take a semi-final the Impact probably deserved to win. This is without considering other games; I have literally been writing about the perfidy of Canadian Soccer Association referees here for five years. I wrote about all these things at the time, but failed to put them together. I am sorry.

I apologize to FC Edmonton for suggesting that, if the Montreal Impact got the advantage in the second leg, you guys were screwed. In fact you guys played great once you were 3-0 down. This is faint praise, and you know it as well as I do, but “never saying die” is a valuable quality, particularly when you have every excuse to give up. In the end you fought hard and fully earned a trip to the Voyageurs Cup finals. The nation will not forget that.

Finally, I apologize again to FC Edmonton for suggesting that it would matter.

Part of me feels bad for the Montreal Impact. They showed balls. Once again, they proved that they’re the only professional Canadian soccer team that gets mad: which not only claims to have a sense of pride but goes out and proves it in situations where most teams would be written off. They’re a bad team, there’s no hiding that, but they care, and as much as I wanted Colin Miller to punch Joey Saputo in the mug there’s no denying the attitude Saputo has given them.

They were second-best on the tie, but what of it? We Whitecaps fans know, more than anyone else in Canada, the pride you can take in a glorious defeat. The Impact won the right to walk out with their heads held high. They came out gangbusters before a lacklustre crowd with a nation scoffing at them, and they lost all the same, but that happens sometimes. They deserved to, in the words of an American admiral of years past, dip their flag to no earthly king. But referee Drew Fischer has taken that away from them.

If you missed the game, I will give you a short précis. Montreal took a 3-0 lead in their home leg, and a 4-2 lead on aggregate, based entirely on the quality of their play. They were markedly in the ascendancy. But Edmonton’s Frank Jonke bagged a quick brace to put the Eddies ahead on away goals. Nobody likes losing on away goals but the Impact were staring it in the face, trying to batter Edmonton’s door down and not managing it. Then, suddenly, in an impossible six minutes of stoppage time, Montreal was given a penalty kick on a bogus handball. And that was the end. The controversial shot was ball to hand. That’s not in the Laws of the Game, but the afflicted player had his arms in hard against his body, and that is. It was never a penalty by the ruling of any competent official, but Drew Fischer thought he could decide a national semi-final based on it.

Of course every referee blunders. If this were the first time a CSA referee had come down mysteriously in favour of the higher-profile club I would give them the benefit of the doubt. But it was far from that. In fact, it’s a running theme ever since the CSA adopted a national championship format. From the 6-1 Toronto victory over Montreal to deny the USL-1 Whitecaps, to a rainout at BMO Field where Aron Winter took his team off the field and the CSA said “okay then,” to a semi-final last year where Vancouver got two goals over Edmonton that should never have counted from Silviu Petrescu, to Daryl Fordyce winning a dead-certain penalty last week in stoppage time at Clarke Stadium, the most clearcut foul you ever will see, that was completely ignored, to this. All without considering re season or playoff games between Canadian teams where the same things seemed to happen. If it were mere chance you’d expect the little guys to fluke out a referee-aided victory as often as the big teams, and yet that’s never, ever how it goes. Always the decision goes in favour of the team you’d think the CSA would want to win. Too long, and too many incidents, to say “coincidence”, as I once did.

I spent $30 to go to the Vancouver – Toronto game at BC Place, because I love the Voyageurs Cup and even my hatred of MLS didn’t override that. Instead, after this latest incident, I stuffed the ticket in my pants pocket and went home. Why should I go cheer on my team in a game where the result was pre-determined?

Okay, okay, I hear you protesting. Let’s say that this is all coincidence. That the Canadian Soccer Association genuinely wants the best team to win the Voyageurs Cup, and if that’s an NASL side so be it. You know, I can believe it… yet referees keep deciding the games in favour of the biggest cities with the most fans. The best-case scenario is that the Canadian Soccer Association is guilty of negligence and complacency in the first degree in a country where its former “national” league, the current Canadian Soccer League, has already been busted in a match-fixing scandal. This isn’t just me talking, the video’s out there if you want to re-watch the games yourself.

The people who led Canada’s men’s national team to an 8-1 World Cup qualifying loss in Honduras are still in charge. They have let us down every day since the 2000 Gold Cup, and they’re letting us down now. Once, when the incompetence got too much, we put on black t-shirts and chanted “sack the CSA” at Canadian national team games. “Can’t do their jobs, don’t take no blame.” Canadian legend Tomasz Radzinski even wore a “Sack the CSA” shirt off the pitch in his last home game (I was there). Somehow they’ve squirmed out from under that charge, and yet the horror continues.

Thanks for putting on a show, FC Edmonton. I know which team deserved to go to the final. So do all neutral fans, who have been flooding Twitter with protests, who were patting the one Edmonton fan in Vancouver on the shoulder when the latest screwjob hit. I underestimated you, as did the Impact for a while. Hopefully someday you’ll get a competition worthy of you.

Can Vancouver really overturn a 2-1 series deficit against Toronto FC despite running out a Children’s Crusade lineup and getting slapped around pretty good at BMO Field? Even the positive moral value of playing all those Canadians is diminished today: Marco Bustos, Kianz Froese, Mitch Piraux, and Jackson Farmer are down in Florida with the U-20 national team[1]. Can Edmonton really get a result in Montreal against the Impact? It seems like everybody outside Montreal is cheering for the Eddies, because everybody loves an underdog and hates the Impact. (Everybody inside Montreal is ignoring this game because the Canadiens and Bruins are playing.)

Last week I pointed out Montreal was on a run for the MLS Wooden Spoon (non-Chivas USA category); in the seven days since they’ve given even the Goats a run for their money. The Impact are coming off an more-than-usually-embarrassing 3-0 home loss to the Kansas City Wizards in which Montreal was out-shots-directeded 12-4 and had a FIFA 14-style 21.8% of the possession (I know possession isn’t much of an indicator but twenty-one point fucking eight). Then again, Montreal was playing with 10 men for 73 minutes after Collen Warner got sent off. Then again again, the man they were playing without was Collen Warner. And that was just the latest in a long string of games in which Frank Klopas’s charges got the shit kicked out of them. And with the Habs selling out Bell Centre to watch TV it looks like the Impact will be playing in front of their moms and six Ultras.

The Impact are a bad team and getting worse. When FC Edmonton only needs a draw, and we’re talking about the most draw-ish team in the country here, that’s a good sign. But there’s one thing which, even when they’re flipping coaches like Pogs and scouring Serie A for 45-year-old Italians, you can always say about the Montreal Impact: they have a living, beating heart. That heart’s name is Joey Saputo, their greatest weakness and their greatest strength. You saw his tweet, I’m sure, after the Kansas City game, where he stated in cereal-box-approved style that “Our fans deserve better. Changes will be coming, guaranteed.”[2] It’s an old tune but, short-term, in the past it’s worked. Talk all you want about the players tuning Klopas out or the team being pensioners and Jack McInerney; we’ve heard that narrative and seen Impact teams we so casually wrote off coming out with all the fires of Hell lit under their asses in seasons past. Sure, eight times a season Joey does something eccentric, but thanks to him the Impact, alone out of every professional team in Canada, get pissed off.

You don’t want the Impact pissed off. Not when you’re FC Edmonton. Not when you’re anybody this side of Atlético Madrid. There’s still some punch in that old team, a fistful of skill, some diabolical finish, and they don’t need much tonight.

On balance, I think Montreal’s going to win this one and take the tie on the basis of “modest margin and superior team”, but it’s a near-run thing and the Eddies have some advantages. First, the Impact are bad. That’s the easy part. The Eddies are also bad, which is why I remain pessimistic, and Montreal has the Saputo Factor, but a bad team can always find a new way to disappoint you.

Second, Montreal gave its “A” team a good run in that Kansas City game. Brovsky, Ouimette, Mapp, and Bernadello all went 90. Felipe went 70, McInerney went 69. This points to another eleven of mild schmucks along the Blake Smith and Decomposing Patrice Bernier line, which is all to the good for Edmonton. Meanwhile, Colin Miller went with an A- lineup at the seriously-that’s-their-name Indy Eleven. Captain Albert Watson sat out entirely (through suspension). Tomi Ameobi also missed the eighteen. Hanson Boakai was an unused substitute. Neil Hlavaty (45 minutes) got a shorter run. This advantage is tempered by Montreal playing at home while Edmonton was in Indianapolis, but it’s an advantage all the same. The most important of that rested lot may not be Boakai but Watson, who is an excellent centre back for the level in almost every field, but is also physical. If history is any guide, he will need to be very careful to avoid conceding a penalty on some shabby excuse.

Third, Edmonton won that Indy game! 2-1, on a dandy quickfire double by Daryl Fordyce and Kareem Moses (trying to deny Erik Hurtado the title of “Most Implausible Scorer on a Canadian Team That Weekend”). That’s not a thing Edmonton does! FC Edmonton learning how to win on the road is like Happy Gilmore learning to putt. Indy Eleven is winless, with only two draws to their name, but they’re not quite a team of schmucks: everybody will know Brazilian ex-international Kléberson and more people should know dandy Honduran mid Walter Ramirez, who along with Lance Parker and Zurab Tsiskaridze was one of the three good things to come out of Miami FC. Ol’ Mike Ambersley has trundled in goals for more teams than I can count. And the Eddies beat ’em! Away! That, frankly, is a far more improbable feat than that mere “home win over Montreal” ever was.

The street thinks FC Edmonton will park the bus, lump the ball down the field to Jonke and/or Ameobi, and that if any chances come the Eddies way it’ll be through Boakai or Fordyce countering. They’re right. Colin Miller is one of God’s own bus-parkers. Nature imbued him with the power to take any combination of players and have them lumping the ball down to the opposite touchline within ten minutes of kickoff, and that’s in games he’s trying to win, not draw. It’s not even, necessarily, bad tactics. When you’re facing a modest skill deficit but holding onto a lead, the key is to keep the chances down. And, mentally, Montreal is a team that can get frustrated easily. The catch will be making sure the Impact expend energy as quickly as the Eddies do, and that means smart counters and the occasional aggressive sortie to make sure Montreal works for it. It can be done. I’m not betting on it, but it can be done. The trouble is that if Montreal snatches that goal, and Edmonton needs to open up the offense, they run right back into last week’s Hack-a-Jonke without the guarantee of more Boakai brilliance against a defense that now knows what to expect, and without much hope Karl Ouimette will forget how to do a header again.

Then there are the Whitecaps, who are looking to overturn exactly the same deficit as Montreal. But Vancouver is trying to do it against Toronto FC, probably the most talented team in the country this year who is taking this competition sort of seriously.

Here’s the thing. Obviously Carl Robinson doesn’t give a flying fuck about the Voyageurs Cup semifinal. Obviously. All his spin about “oh the kids have deserved it” is just that: if he really thought his young players totally deserved minutes against top opposition then he’d be playing them in the league, not exclusively in elimination Cup scenarios. In the grand story of the 2014 Vancouver Whitecaps, which is the more meaningful game: the home leg of a semifinal or away to the Columbus Crew? And in which game did Robinson run out the best he had? In which game did Robinson give interviews in which he, again, openly discussed which players he’d start? Quite. We’ll see if Robinson sends out the big guns in the final, should the Whitecaps get that far, but for now he’s treating the Voyageurs Cup like friendlies.

Which I would hate a lot more if it wasn’t getting Canadians some much-needed playing time, and if it wasn’t still leaving the Whitecaps with just a shot at victory. Sure, Toronto FC outplayed the Whitecaps Residency pretty hard at BMO Field, but that wasn’t primarily the Canadians’ faults and even that game was fully respectable. Now Toronto is in BC Place with a by-no-means comfortable advantage, and with Bustos, Froese, Piraux, and Farmer away the Whitecaps will be obliged to start an older player or two through sheer attrition. We’ll still see a young crew: Marco Carducci is confirmed to start again in goal, Christian Dean at left back (if he counts as a kid, which he shouldn’t; fuck off, NCAA), and my money says we’ll see Jordan Haynes at BC Place. But there’ll be a few more reservists rather than outright Residency kids.

The FCs have two road wins this year, in Seattle (uh-oh) and Columbus, but neither was exactly a day of glory. In both games Toronto was comfortably outshot, had less than 40% of the possession, and were outpassed by at least a 25% margin. In short, fairly lucky wins. They also got annihilated away by Salt Lake and lost ignominiously in Dallas. Their most recent game was a 2-1 loss at home to New England in which Toronto did not exactly play badly but certainly did little to earn a point.

The Whitecaps even have fatigue problems: Carducci and Haynes both played 90 minutes in a USSDA game in Seattle on Saturday[3], then Haynes saw 17 minutes for the U-23s in Kitsap on Sunday[4]. Teibert of course got garbage time in Columbus, as did starter-presumptive Nigel Reo-Coker, and I’m sure we’ll see at least one of Kekuta Manneh or Erik Hurtado start up high. Normally the side playing its “B” team has the advantage in fatigue; not so much today, and the use of Carducci and Haynes on the U-18 team when there was really no need is another data point for “the Voyageurs Cup is an afterthought to the coaching staff”.

You gotta like Toronto FC’s chances. (Let me rephrase, Whitecaps fans: you have to think that Toronto FC has better odds of winning the tie.) There remains the Joe Bendik factor. I don’t buy him for a second, I still don’t, and between him and the sketchy Toronto defense they could let Vancouver back into it with a breakdown like the one which gave Vancouver that hopefully-useful away goal last week. They do that sort of thing. With the Whitecaps liable to send out a second-rate offense (no, scoring a beauty against Columbus does not mean Erik Hurtado has suddenly learned how to be a forward), it might be necessary.

Right now I have Toronto and Montreal both going through, which coincidentally would be the result I want least, because I’ve learned by now how the soccer gods like to squeeze my balls.

(EDIT, May 14 10:07 PDT: this article originally asserted that the Toronto – New England game was this past weekend and made assertions about potential TFC fatigue based on that. Toronto in fact had a bye; the NE game was the weekend previous. I knew that, too. Thanks, Duncan Fletcher, for the correction.)

FC Edmonton has beaten an MLS team for the first time in competitive play. I defy you not to be happy.

Normally I like to play the master of historical context. “You say this is the greatest Whitecaps midfielder of all time, but Martin Nash blah blah blah, you MLS-worshipping schmuck.” To hell with that. This has been called the greatest victory in the five-year, four-season history of FC Edmonton. These people are correct. What a day. What a day!

After my shot at hype-calming on Tuesday, Hanson Boakai put on a show. His aggressiveness and confidence put the wind up a Montreal midfield more used to soi-disant Eastern Conference attacking midfielders of the Daigo Kobayashi type. A guy actually trying to shove the ball down their gullets is a rare thing. Meanwhile, the Impact defense was having kittens over Frank Jonke, going full Hack-a-Shaq on the big forward who, as if by compensation, had his most effective game of the year just pulling off little touches and making space for his comrades, as shown to perfection on the equalizing goal when Montreal had their mitts so full of Jonke they didn’t consider the possibility that Handsome Bowtie might make a La Liga-quality throughball to Tomi Ameobi, who’d have nothing to do but finish…

Holy crow, what a ball that was. Holy crow. Sated with your diet of EPL magnificence and looking forward to the World Cup you might not be as pumped as I but Canadians, as a rule, don’t make passes like that. I don’t know what they’ve been teaching Boakai over there in Edmonton but it must be working. (Also, he created two half-scoring chances with sheer legs and guts and even when his youthful exuberance led to Montreal getting the best of him on a possession he’d be taking another crack at it next time around. His teammates didn’t seem frustrated. Hlavaty and Fordyce, two guys who don’t mind running themselves, were happy to pass the ball off to Boakai and let him create the opportunity. Small wonder, with his passing and crossing being so dangerous.)

And then the winner. John Smits pounds it long, Karl Ouimette goes to head the ball back to (the excellent) Evan Bush, only he forgets the part where he heads the ball, Michael Nonni was lurking in case of precisely that sort of mistake, 2-1 Eddies. Another Canadian. One who, as Steve Sandor has pointed out at almost unseemly length[1], was a batted eyelash away from being cut before this season. Silviu Petrescu missed a clear penalty shout for Daryl Fordyce in the last Planck time of the match, the kind of thing that could could back to haunt Edmonton in the second leg, but no matter, not for now.

Victory long-delayed, after all, is the very sweetest. Edmonton went into the 2011 Voyageurs Cup full of young optimism. We didn’t get to see how justified it was, as star player Shaun Saiko was unjustly sent off after only 23 minutes and Toronto cruised to a 3-0 win. The next week, away, a Toronto “B” team easily slapped Edmonton around. In 2012 the Eddies played Vancouver in their first game and got thumped; the only no-bullshit home beating the Eddies have taken in this competition. The next week, away, a Vancouver “B” team easily slapped Edmonton around (though Yashir Pinto made things briefly interesting). And in 2013 Edmonton once again faced Vancouver and would have won but for Silviu Petrescu giving Vancouver no fewer than two goals that never should have happened, one offside, the other a flagrant dive for a penalty. It was a great injustice in a competition that’s seen its share. The next week, away, a Vancouver “B” team easily slapped Edmonton around.

So now Edmonton has their first leg victory, and long fucking overdue it has been. But you see that the second leg is the catch. Apart from 21 minutes at BC Place on May 9, 2012, Edmonton has looked outmatched away against MLS teams playing schmucks like Greg Klazura, Floyd Franks, Michael Nanchoff, you get the drift.

Will Montreal take the Eddies lightly? Remember that last year Toronto FC won 2-0 at BMO Field off a weakened Montreal in the first leg, back when we all thought the Impact would be pretty good[2]. The Montreal Ultras responded to this with a now-famous banner reading “nous on l’a pris au sérieux” — “we took it seriously.”[3] The Impact invited Toronto FC back to Stade Saputo and beat the FCs 6-0[4], tied for the biggest ass-kicking in the twelve-year history of the Voyageurs Cup[5]. A fair bit has changed with Montreal in the past year, but the Impact have form rousing themselves to vengeance.

This has been the obligatory pessimistic part of the post; those things had to be said, but this is still a magnificent day. You sometimes see upset games where the goalkeeper had the game of his life, the underdog had ten men behind the ball and snatched one on the counter, the goalposts rang with the sound of missed opportunities. Nah. Edmonton decided to trade punches with Montreal and won on every scorecard. There was nothing negative in their tactics. Somewhat unreliable official statistics had the two teams even on shots directed, 7-7, and Edmonton ahead on shots on target, 4-2[6]. Edmonton outcornered Montreal handily and led in possession until Montreal’s superior rest began to tell in the second half, and the pace changed to more straight vertical attack. Luck wasn’t conspicuous in either direction. Jack McInerney nearly made himself famous with an appalling header off the crossbar, but since he scored a few minutes later I think we can call that even, while as I mentioned Daryl Fordyce really should have had a penalty on 90’+4.

Oh, and man of the match was Hanson Boakai. Of course it was. Putting the “Canadian champion” into “Canadian championship” at 17 years old. Some eyebrows were raised when he was substituted out for Mike Banner, but the world is better off with Boakai running himself stupid for 70 minutes rather than trying to pace himself for 90. Banner is not the most popular player in Edmonton right now, his first two games have not been inspiring, but I swear he has talent. I will have to make a point of writing hopeful but somewhat skeptical article on Boakai before big games in the future. You know, people are already asking which big European club he’ll go to? It’s a little early, surely, it takes more than two man of the match awards to start buying plane tickets to Barcelona or Bayern Munich, but it’s been a long time since I saw a player that young look so bright professionally in this country. Maybe I never have.

The evening’s first game was less exciting but probably showed more of Canada’s soccer future, so let’s conclude with two paragraphs on the young Vancouver Whitecaps in their 2-1 loss to Toronto FC. Toronto took the “eleven barrels of hell” approach we discussed on Tuesday, as I feared. So with Toronto’s A- against Vancouver’s B- or C+ the result for the Whitecaps was about as good as we could have hoped for: out-played, certainly, but not Vancouver’s worst road game even of this season, with the critical first goal against caused by a lapse from veteran Nigel Reo-Coker rather than any of the youth. A key away goal, a survivable margin, and plenty to be proud of. It’s significant that the weakest links in the team were Reo-Coker, Erik Hurtado, and Johnny Leveron, not the raw rookies. (Hurtado had one nice touch that made a half-chance, then was immediately substituted off. “That’s not what we pay you for, Erik!”) The official man of the match was Issey Nakajima-Farran, who was playing on Rookie while his teammates played on Pro thanks to his matchup with Reo-Coker, but still asserted himself. The Whitecaps man of the match was Russell Teibert. Two more Canadian champions.

Let’s not sugarcoat it. The MLS debutantes, Froese and Bustos especially, weren’t used to the match speed. But of course they weren’t! How could they have been, this was their first exposure to it. Both showed skill, had nice moments, and weren’t overawed by the calibre of their debut: that’s what counts. Bustos looked like he was already ready to play once in a while in MLS, with only a slight trepidation in steering the attack standing out, and of course he cleared a ball off the line, which is always the right play. (Who would have guessed that Marco would be the first to a professional save?) Froese has been criticized for failing to read the patchy BMO Field turf, and fair enough, a professional needs to do better, but he also made the give-and-go with Russell Teibert that was Vancouver’s most skillful attack of the game. Marco Carducci was at fault for neither goal against, has been reviewed too harshly for his aggressive but ultimately effective early charge at Gilberto that Carlyle Mitchell cleaned up, made some tidy saves, and wanted only a bit of confidence. And, at last, a national audience saw some of the Bryce Alderson I’ve always been such a fan of. Hopefully this leads to additional appearances; no Whitecap deserves them more.

There are a few reasons why I’m even more excited than usual for the second round of the Voyageurs Cup this year. (Is it the second round, or the “first round proper”? Was the Edmonton – Ottawa leg the start of the competition, or qualification for the final rounds FA Cup-style? We need a ruling on this. For reasons too heartbreaking to get into the Canadian Soccer Style Guide is mostly about mixed drinks.)

Firstly, congratulations to FC Edmonton on their first ever Voyageurs Cup victory against the Ottawa Fury. Did you see the two games? You lucky dog. Sportsnet didn’t show them and the the stream was less reliable than Tony Donatelli: the Ottawa games had fleeting moments of watchability for us ordinary schmucks, but was apparently excellent for subscribers watching through Rogers’ website without a care in the world. The Edmonton stream was quite good when BT Edmonton finally flipped the switch on their end from Modern Family re-runs with maybe five minutes left in the first half. Given that both Ottawa and Edmonton are accustomed to putting out decent-quality web streams for NASL games on a weekly basis, one wonders what the fuck happened when suddenly the job was on the Canadian Soccer Association’s watch. Of course the root cause of all this is Sportsnet deciding to put darts, generic highlight packages, and Prime Time Sports re-runs on each of their six stations instead of Canada’s national soccer championship, but the ball was dropped rather heavily on what should, by now, be a routine job.

As the more watchable, not to mention the more interesting, of the games was the Edmonton leg that’s where most of the analysis has come from. Here are the highlights if you missed them[1]; you’ll observe that it is ninety seconds of young Canadian midfielder Hanson Boakai violating Omar Jarun so egregiously the police were called. The list of shifty midfielders who’ve slapped Omar Jarun around in this country is a pretty long one, and Boakai’s goal and two assists in that game, while remarkable and deserving of all the plaudits, were the first points of his professional career. So while observers naturally heap praise on Boakai for his game they have been a little conservative looking forward, especially with the coming of a Montreal Impact defense which, whatever its many flaws, hasn’t got Omar Jarun on it.

Ha of course not. Here is the Edmonton Journal‘s Norm Cowley with an article titled “FC Edmonton phenom could become a ‘Canadian Messi’.”[2] The headline quotes Colin Miller, who says the fateful words in a bit more of a pie-in-the-sky sense than the headline would seem to imply. Nick Sabetti of Goal.com referred to Boakai as a “star midfielder” who is “already making a name for himself.”[3]. And fans have been beating the Boakai drum continuously for the past week. It’s heady stuff for a player who, last season, saw 34 minutes of action with no statistics of note plus 67 minutes so far this regular season (again, without achieving much). He’d be part of the second eleven full-time if the team was healthier, and the return of Mike Banner looks bad for his starting chances going forward. I like Boakai, though his game needs rounding out, but good God almighty it’s getting insane over here, all because, in the proud tradition of teams that don’t get media attention most of the year, people watched one game and couldn’t take it in context.

If the Eddies are going to beat Montreal they’re going to need a lot more than a game’s worth of teenager hype, and that’s only just possible. I haven’t watched much MLS this year but even I know the Montreal Impact have been… problematic. They have the lowest goal differential in the league among teams that aren’t Chivas USA. They have one point from four road games, and that point was an evenly-fought game against fellow Eastern Conference dumpster fire Philadelphia. Their defense allows enough shots that they’re almost 2013 Vancouver Whitecaps bad. With a few talented players but a highly sketchy defense and not enough midfielders you can rely on, they remind me a lot of the 2008 Toronto FCs, and we all know how they did against second division sorts.

On the other hand, Montreal has the talent to cause problems to the Eddies patchwork defense than I’d like: Marco di Vaio is the sort of clever, technical player just born to give Kareem Moses a nightmare. Jack McInerney is also a player. They’re well-rested, with no games since April 26 (a game they won, albeit while being outshot 17-7 at home by those same woeful Union), which partially ameliorates the travel issue and might well mean starts for their best eleven, though Saturday’s league game against the Kansas City Wizards will presumably weigh on Klopas’s shoulders. Finally, FC Edmonton is… well, I’d call them the Montreal Impact of the NASL, but part of me fears they’re the Chivas USA. Unless the Impact come in way off their best, and we can’t rule that out, it looks like Montreal’s tie.

There was one hopeful sign for the Eddies. Last week Impact coach Frank Klopas gave an interview with the team’s website where you could almost hear the boredom dripping off him.

It’s a team, I think, that’s very good in transition. They have pace out wide. They have some good, quality players. They’re very organized defensively[4].

No they fucking aren’t! “Pace out wide”? Lance Laing is almost fast, as is bench scrub Horace James. The rest of the guys are either bull-in-a-china-shop sorts like Eddie Edward or players who may be useful but are hardly known for pace like Michael Nonni, Neil Hlavaty, Mike Banner, or Boakai himself (shifty, yes, fast, not really). And as for organized defense, this came before the Eddies’ home thumping to the Fort Lauderdale Strikers so excuse Klopas that but they’ve still had a revolving door at centre back and left John Smits more exposed than a flasher at a preschool.

So yes, I’m predicting a fairly handy Montreal victory over the two legs. That doesn’t mean Edmonton doesn’t have upset potential, because they do. Neil Hlavaty is still trying to find 2011-2013 Neil Hlavaty within his heart somewhere, and if he does that’ll be a major link between the defense and attack which has been missing. Mike Banner didn’t look like anything against Fort Lauderdale but he’s a good player who had a dandy preseason. And Ritchie Jones hasn’t quite got his sights in yet: maybe MLS opposition will motivate him. Three midfielders letting the Eddies get away from their so-often-fatal route one soccer, combined with the idiosyncratic pitch at Clarke Stadium and Montreal’s possible presumption of victory. Victory has a recipe, but don’t show it to Gordon Ramsay, he would not be pleased.

I’m not just excited for Edmonton, though. Yes, it’s that rarest of things: Vancouver Whitecaps first team analysis on Maple Leaf Forever!

Well, I say “analysis” but I really mean “banalysis”. And I say “first team” but I really mean “whatever you call that thing Carl Robinson is going to throw out on the field.” First, Robinson named his Voyageurs Cup roster. This doesn’t mean too much since you can modify it until very late in the day, but it was still an eye-catcher: no Kenny Miller (well, we know why now), no Pedro Morales, no Jay DeMerit, Jordan Harvey, Andy O’Brien, or Nigel Reo-Coker, no David Ousted. But a load of Canadians, including recently-recalled Charleston loanee Jackson Farmer and Residency boys Jordan Haynes, Marco Bustos, Mitch Piraux, and Kianz Froese[5]. That’s a pretty aggressive declaration of youth. Then Robinson announced that he would be giving Carducci and Alderson their first professional starts against Toronto FC in the Voyageurs Cup[6]. Alongside Russell Teibert, and with possibly one or two kids coming off the bench, that means the Whitecaps could well use more Canadian minutes in one championship game than they did the entire 2012 season under Martin Rennie, and that’s without Sam Adekugbe, who’s injured.

I should be unambiguously delighted. I like Alderson a lot. This opportunity was long overdue for him, especially consider the oft-uninspiring midfielders he’s been competing with for minutes. Carducci hasn’t waited so long, but I wanted him to see a bit of time against the Chivas USAs of the world if practical: this is early for him, but he’s an undeniable talent, and if you’re going to rest Ousted much better Carducci gets the minutes then dolloping them to Paolo Tornaghi like it’s a reserve game.

Yet it does show a distinct disinclination to take the Voyageurs Cup as seriously as Vancouver should. Starting Canadians is good sense, but leaving important first-teamers off the roster apparently for sheer devilry and showing Ryan Nelsen your hand days in advance is a little bit much. In that sense Robinson’s treating an important cup match against a rival with a superior side like a preseason friendly.

Personally, I incline more towards pleasure than worry. Partially this is because I think the Aldersons and Teiberts can handle it, the Bustoses and Hayneses won’t embarrass themselves coming off the bench, and that even if the team as a whole winds up being a little weak it might be worth it if one or two of these boys can shine and force their way into the regular lineup. Even if there are disappointing players — and with this many kids getting this many vital minutes somebody will disappoint — the experience will help. Developing our best young talent, even if it costs games in the short run, is a winning strategy long-term. I wish we were developing it against the New England Revolution rather than in our Cup, but still so much better than nothing.

Besides, we don’t know what Ryan Nelsen is going to do. Just from scanning the fan world, the possibilities run from “Defoe, Bradley, and the full force of Toronto FC’s eleven barrels of hell raining down on the inexperienced Whitecaps to score a big lead and restore some confidence” to “I don’t know who this guy is, but he’s going 180 minutes.” I think Defoe is a little overrated and Bradley is a lot overrated, but I also don’t think Jackson Farmer and his 200-odd lifetime minutes against grown men is the man to defend either one. And I haven’t even said Gilberto yet, or Jonathan Osorio (though he may be injured), or Dwayne De Rosario, who is about 60% washed-up but still amounts to a useful player at this level.

On the other hand, if the “B” team comes out, who have we got? A goalkeeper, according to Nelsen’s press chatter Joe Bendik, who is below replacement level. A defense with an awful lot of nothing (Mark Bloom plays regularly for them! Mark Bloom!). Midfield? Well, yes, MeRo, but also Issey Nakajima-Farran and I mean come on, for God’s sake, Bryce, if you can’t handle Issey Nakajima-Fucking-Farran you’re not the player I think you are. In short, if Nelsen’s attitude is fairly similar to Robinson’s, there’s hope there. Depth on depth, the Whitecaps can slug it out with Toronto, though it’ll be a near-run thing.

Oh God I hope the Whitecaps win. I know that’s a pretty obvious statement coming from an alleged Whitecaps fan, but even more than usual. Oh God, give us this one.

Last week, Don Garber broke from his usual policy of pretending Canada doesn’t exist to talk up Major League Soccer’s impact on the country at his press conference to announce David Beckham’s new franchise in Miami. He hoped Canada would qualify for its first World Cup since 1986 (so do I!) and that he thought MLS would get us there. Which is optimistic, given that the MLS era has coincided with the all-time nadir of Canada’s men’s national team, but of course that’s not all MLS’s fault.

Still, it’s worth evaluating the big picture, and if Garber is right that Canada is getting something out of its association with his league hopefully we can rustle up some evidence besides all those goals we haven’t scored. So let’s see what the Major League Soccer era has done in one area clubs can control on their own: the number of Canadians getting minutes every season on Canadian clubs.

Many of you will be familiar with Out of Touch‘s traditional Canadian content report, where Jono looks at what proportion of its minutes each Canadian professional team gives domestic players[1]. It’s a great way to see how the Canadian teams are doing relative to each other. But Jono’s tables are set up to show the percentage of minutes, rather than the mass of them, which is fair when you’re trying to ask which team is doing better (since some teams play more games), but unfair when you’re trying to figure out the bulk benefit to Canadian players as a whole. More importantly, his archives only go back to 2008 while the Canadian MLS era began in 2007. So, to get a clearer look at where we’ve gone in the MLS era, I decided to re-invent the wheel.

I have compiled the Canadian content numbers in domestic professional soccer (defined as USL A-League, USL First Division, USSF Pro D-2, NASL, and MLS) since 2004. This was the last year, prior to the upcoming 2014 season, where five professional teams operated in Canada (Calgary Mustangs, Edmonton Aviators, Montreal Impact, Toronto Lynx, and Vancouver Whitecaps, all of the USL A-League) and may be taken as a high-water mark since the demise of the Canadian Soccer League. It was also the earliest season for which player-by-player numbers were easily available. My figures do not agree with Jono’s at many points: I suspect his are the more accurate because many of mine are taken from season totals rather than game-by-game summaries, but it’s small change either way[2]. I also list players who appeared to have been in match-day eighteens but gotten no minutes, but who then later appeared in a senior international training camp, for the sake of completeness.

If you like, my spreadsheet listing each of the players is available online, so you can use the numbers for your own purposes. I’ll also give the full figures for a few major seasons in-line with the article, and a summary at the end.

2004 USL A-League

Calgary Mustangs

Edmonton Aviators

Montreal Impact

Toronto Lynx

Vancouver Whitecaps

Name

Mins

Name

Mins

Name

Mins

Name

Mins

Name

Mins

Auvigne, Jaime

2264

Akok, Freddy

1354

Biello, Mauro

1723

Arango, Andres

1131

Clarke, Jeff

2017

Castrillon, John Jr.

462

Bosch, Kurt

1833

Braz, Adam

1510

Ashton, Brian

38

Corazzin, Carlo

1211

Chala, Conrad

306

Chin, Gordon

2379

Budalic, Niki

304

Bartolomeu, Edgar

1528

Craveiro, Nico

1040

Frazao, Steven

237

Da Silva, Liam

2054

Cann, Adrian

256

Connor, Matthew

45

Cucca, Tino

33

Gillespie, Jordan

1650

Devlin, Chris

1296

DiTullio, Jason

844

Diplacido, David

1805

Dasovic, Nick

2143

Holdt, Steffen

1969

Dhaliwal, Paul

1417

Fronimadis, David

217

Dodds, Jamie

1940

Franks, Chris

984

Jesic, Damir

1580

Drummond, Daniel

470

Gervais, Gabriel

2386

Faria, Shawn

1231

Franks, Mike

895

Kooy, Chris

1048

Fraser, Sean

2401

Grande, Sandro

1902

Gbeke, Charles

657

Gomes, Mark

250

Mert, Mesut

2202

Handsor, Chris

950

Hainault, Andre

17

Gerba, Ali

2083

Harmse, Kevin

510

Pavicic, Mike

1353

Kassaye, Simon

604

Leduc, Pat

2074

Handsor, Chris

202

Heald, Ollie

1427

Peszneker, Charles

1773

Kaushal, Vikram

506

Lemire, Chris

383

Hughes, Tyler

1703

Jordan, Jason

1359

Reyes, Nic

744

Lemire, Chris

1049

Olivieri, Andrew

281

Mattacchione, Joe

2546

Kindel, Steve

2307

Richer, Aaron

754

Molina, Cesar

32

Pizzolitto, Nevio

1653

Munthali, Rumbani

1353

Lyall, Geordie

1090

Sestito, Angelo

1667

Munoz, Eric

668

Ribeiro, Antonio

1737

O’Connor, Matthew

329

Morris, David

1800

Slade, Mark

99

Sibiya, Sipho

1248

Selaidopoulos, Kyriakos

148

Prostran, Igor

519

Nash, Martin

1752

Zuniga, Nicolas

1051

Stankov, Nick

1208

Sutton, Greg

2366

Rowland, Brian

90

Sulentic, Johnny

1676

Stankov, Robert

2

Williams, Chris

976

Serioux, Adrian

1184

Thompson, Justin

1301

Stephens, Wesley

21

Valente, Alfredo

1633

Tachie, Desmond

654

Xausa, Davide

1796

Vignjevic, Nikki

1989

Subtotal

19159

22135

18777

18384

25224

Total Canadian domestic minutes: 103707

Naturally the five-team 2004 season had the most Canadian minutes I have recorded, but not always with the best results. Edmonton and Calgary were legendary disasters, the two worst teams in the league, and their Canadian content was mostly picked for price rather than quality. The large majority of those Canadian players were out of professional soccer when their teams folded; a lucky few got a season or two elsewhere, but very few did much. Edmonton’s Chris Lemire and Calgary’s Mesut Mert became the answers to trivia questions when they were the only players in their teams’ history to be called up for a senior Canadian men’s national team training camp under Frank Yallop for non-official friendlies in July 2004[3] (Mert got another camp in 2007 after his final year with the Montreal Impact[4] but never received a full cap). A few other Aviators and Mustangs surfaced for odds-and-ends seasons here and there; Edmonton’s Gordon Chin had runs with Toronto Lynx and Vancouver, Calgary’s Chris Kooy and Edmonton’s Lemire returned for the first season of FC Edmonton in 2011, and for reasons best known to themselves the Toronto Lynx scooped a handful of ex-Aviators for 2005, but by and by large it was a sorry group.

But the Vancouver Whitecaps, who recorded more Canadian minutes in 2004 than any professional team since, were second in the Western Conference and made the conference semi-finals. Montreal, whose 18,777 Canadian minutes would have been considered very good in any other season, won the whole thing. Even Toronto was less bad than usual[5]. Giving big minutes to Canadians was no guarantee of success but nor was it any impediment. Counting Mert and Lemire, twenty-five Canadians on a Canadian A-League team in 2004 would at least be called up to a senior men’s national team camp over their careers. Twenty-five! And those weren’t bad teams by today’s standards; they put up a credible fight for 2006 World Cup qualification and made a strong run in the 2007 Gold Cup.

2004 was the high water mark for Canadian domestic professionals in more ways than one. In 2005, with fewer Canadian teams naturally total minutes declined, but so did the domestic minutes in (very good) Vancouver and (regular season champion) Montreal. The Toronto Lynx increased to 20,257 minutes but were a nightmare on the field; with a bunch of old Aviators so I don’t know what they thought was going to happen. Long-retired legend Lyndon Hooper hit the pitch on August 21 and September 5. But it wasn’t all 38-year-olds, scrubs, and Robbie Aristodemo: Charles Gbeke, Ali Gerba, Dave Simpson, and Chris Williams were all on that team and had their best years ahead of them. Toronto FC today would consider that a decent haul.

2006 USL First Division

Montreal Impact

Toronto Lynx

Vancouver Whitecaps

Name

Mins

Name

Mins

Name

Mins

Biello, Mauro

2192

Antsey, Ryan

42

Cann, Adrian

1902

Braz, Adam

1914

Arango, Andres

2430

Clarke, Jeff

2316

Di Ioia, Massimo

516

Aristodemo, Robbie

2051

Djekanovic, Srdjan

0

DiTullio, Jason

262

Bartolomeu, Edgar

496

Harmse, Kevin

0

Fronimadis, David

210

Bedenikovic, Marco

1761

Jordan, Jason

373

Gatti, Simon

157

Chin, Gordon

1283

Kambere, Diaz

146

Gervais, Gabriel

1988

Dekker, Niels

834

Kindel, Steve

2053

Leduc, Pat

1570

Diplacido, David

1719

Lyall, Geordie

1628

Mert, Mesut

919

Dodds, Jamie

2154

Matondo, Sita-Taty

510

Pizzolitto, Nevio

1980

Eja-Tabe, Huffman

84

Morris, David

1438

Ribeiro, Antonio

994

Faria, Shawn

151

Nash, Martin

2220

Sutton, Greg

1260

Mattacchione, Joe

1184

Valente, Alfredo

664

Medwin, Cameron

546

Menezes, Tony

339

Palleschi, Matthew

1326

Pottinger, Damien

1016

Shepherd, Jeremy

340

Williams, Chris

2114

Zagar, Theo

1834

Subtotal

13962

21704

13250

Total Canadian domestic minutes: 48944

In 2006 the decline in Canadian content continued, again apart from Toronto, but three Canadian teams still totaled 48,944 domestic minutes. The Whitecaps were hurt by several key Canadian departures: Kevin Harmse went overseas to Slovakia, Mike Franks got a cameo in England, Carlo Corazzin, Nick Dasovic, Mark Watson, Davide Xausa, Chris Franks, and Liam Da Silva left professional soccer. Most of the remaining players were older, although Adrian Cann was a young bright spot. It was a tough season in terms of Canadian content, if in no other sense: Vancouver won the championship and recorded 13,250 domestic minutes in spite of the serious losses; a poor number by the standards of the day, but 3,000 minutes better than any of our (unsuccessful) MLS teams have ever recorded and in fewer games.

The regular season champion Impact also had good Canadian content led by the eternal Biello, Braz, and Gervais, and got a first-rate season out of their 13,962 Canadian minutes (this would also be a Canadian MLS record by about 33%). The Toronto Lynx were also present and as focused on mediocre Canadian players everybody’s already forgotten as always. Hey, it’s Tony Menezes! He would have been well into his thriving beach soccer career by 2006. What a random lot that was. It was hard not to love the Toronto Lynx, they were so earnestly mediocre. Only the Impact came off as villains, and that was because they ran out a lineup with Braz, Biello, and Nevio Pizzolitto and more often than not finished with eleven men rather than eleven years in prison. The mid-2000s Montreal Impact were the soccer version of the Charleston Chiefs, right now to the Canadian lads and championship appearances. I didn’t love them so much.

Man, the little things we thought were problems back in the mid-2000s, with Vancouver barely getting 13,000 minutes out of its Canadians, and Montreal not winning the right way, and Toronto being dedicated and low-budget but steadfastly incompetent like a college film. In fact things were about to get worse, much worse, beginning with the very next season when Toronto FC came into Major League Soccer, the Lynx went down to USL PDL, and the age of the Canadian playing at home began to end.

2007 USL First Division/Major League Soccer

Montreal Impact

Toronto FC

Vancouver Whitecaps

Name

Mins

Name

Mins

Name

Mins

Arango, Andres

1725

Attakora, Nana

0

Cann, Adrian

2430

Biello, Mauro

992

Braz, Adam

771

Clarke, Jeff

2069

Fronimadis, David

923

Brennan, Jim

2430

Jordan, Jason

350

Gatti, Simon

2046

Chencinski, Tomer

0

Kambere, Diaz

905

Gbeke, Charles

1884

Djekanovic, Srdjan

635

Kindel, Steve

1855

Gervais, Gabriel

1505

Gala, Gabe

222

Leslie, Stefan

106

Leduc, Pat

2328

Hemming, Tyler

239

Lyall, Geordie

907

Marcina, Alen

411

Lombardo, Andrea

726

Marcina, Alen

343

Matondo, Sita-Taty

349

Melo, Joey

110

Marples, Nigel

74

Pizzolitto, Nevio

102

Monsalve, David

90

Morris, David

654

Ribeiro, Antonio

856

Pozniak, Chris

1497

Nash, Martin

1999

Reda, Marco

573

Smith, Graham

85

Stamatopoulos, Kenny

1080

Valente, Alfredo

1170

Sutton, Greg

720

Subtotal

13121

9093

12748

Total Canadian domestic minutes: 35020

Toronto FC brought many good things (three previously-little-known goalkeepers in David Monsalve, Kenny Stamatopoulos, and Tomer Chencinski; didn’t keep any of them, of course, didn’t even play Tomer) and some bad (the careers of Andrea Lombardo, Joey Melo, Gabe Gala, and Tyler Hemming). They won many fans, which is of course a good thing, but not many games, in a plain but charming stadium for which I still have a soft spot. They hired Jim Brennan back from England for a few years of replacement-level left back before he knifed Dale Mitchell in the spine and became irrelevant to the national picture. What they didn’t bring was Canadian content. The 9,093 Canadian minutes from Toronto that year, though very good by later MLS standards thanks to a then-higher Canadian quota, represented a fall of over 12,000 from the now-departed Lynx. To absolutely no effect, as first-year TFC finished dead last. Small wonder the jump from 2006 to 2007 represents the largest recorded plunge in Canadian domestic minutes per game.

The two USL First Division teams did fine. Montreal lost minutes due to Mauro Biello and Nevio Pizzolitto missing significant time (so what; they were third in the league). Vancouver lost a few hundred minutes because of niggling injuries knocking time off the likes of Morris, Lyall, and Nash (more significant; the Whitecaps had a mediocre year). The changes in Montreal and Vancouver amounted to a rounding error; the damage was done in Toronto.

Yet even as I rag on TFC let’s set the historical record straight in their favour. There was a time when second-division fans like me hammered Toronto FC for their policy of giving minutes to imports over Canadians. Little did we suspect the problem had little to do with the team and everything to do with the league and the era: TFC never got as good as the USL teams we were used to but they were, and remain, far more Canadian than the MLS Whitecaps and Impact. I say “and” for a reason: in both years of three-team MLS play Toronto has out-Canadianed Montreal and Vancouver combined.

Looking back Toronto FC almost look like national heroes. Sure, their 9,000+ minute seasons (when the quota was high) and 5,800+ minute seasons (when the quota was lowered) are despicable compared to the second-division teams but among the Canadian MLS teams Toronto has each of the seven best seasons for domestic Canadian content, with Montreal and Vancouver never coming close. Montreal and Vancouver have given Canadians a combined 9,162 minutes in their MLS histories, which is below two individual Toronto FC seasons. See if I say a bad word about the FCs dedication to Canada for a while; even if Michael Bradley eats Kyle Bekker for lunch Toronto’s first team will have done better by Canada than either of their rivals.

But during the second division Vancouver, especially, continued to do well. A healthier Whitecaps team had a more Canadian 2008 and helped themselves to another championship for their patriotism. 2009 was less good, caught in transition as Jason Jordan, Jeff Clarke, and Steve Kindel retired with a title while the likes of Luca Bellisomo, Philippe Davies, Randy Edwini-Bonsu, and Ethan Gage began to make their names, but still an improvement over 2007 and good enough for a USL-1 finals appearance. Montreal lost domestic minutes as Biello and Leduc got old and hopefuls like Felix Brillant and Alex Surprenant didn’t work out. They were 2009 league champions and had a famous CONCACAF Champions League run, so it’s not like they were struggling, but they suffered the indignity of becoming the first second-division team ever to have fewer Canadian minutes than an MLS side (Montreal, in its worst year to date, had 10,244; Toronto, in its best year ever, 10,736).

In spite of the Impact’s decline, which was temporarily halted in 2010, Montreal and Vancouver exceeded 10,000 Canadian domestic minutes every year until they began preparing for MLS. They won games with those Canadians: Vancouver took the 2008 championship, the two teams met in the 2009 final with Montreal prevailing, and in 2010 neither team was elite but the Impact were unlucky to lose as early as they did. The 2010 Montreal Impact did something that would almost be unthinkable today: stuck in a surprising slump when they’d expected to be contenders, Montreal loaded up mid-season… with domestic players, adding among others Ali Gerba and Antonio Ribeiro. It worked, too: I forget how many goals Gerba scored down the stretch in 2010 but it was around a million while Ribeiro looked very lively. The Canadian-reinforced Impact went on to thump probably the league’s best overall team, Austin, 5-2 in the first playoff round before losing a highly unlucky two-legger to Carolina.

The Whitecaps also had a mediocre 2010. Like Montreal, they tried to reinforce midseason, and like Montreal they brought in a few Canadians to do it: Kyle Porter, Alex Elliott, and Terry Dunfield. But that season also saw the team “preparing for MLS”, and they did it by giving minutes that would normally have gone to Canadians over to almost-invariably-disappointing imports. Porter’s playing time amounted to half an hour. Edwini-Bonsu was benched in favour of the likes of Cody Arnoux and Jonathan McDonald, which would be funny if it hadn’t cost us games then and today. Journeyman defender Chris Williams sat with his thumb up his butt while Willis Forko bungled every ball that came towards him. Ethan Gage, once promising, got only a few hundred minutes, including a playoff run where he showed what had gotten people so excited, and was promptly shipped out. The one import worth a scintilla of a damn was Davide Chiumiento, who was useless in his few competitive minutes because he was a perfect sphere and seemed to think USSF D2 was a beer league. For all that there were still Canadian regulars: Bellisomo, Davies, and Martin Nash. But 9,603 Canadian minutes was an all-time low, and 877 of those came from an on-loan Marcus Haber. And none of those three regulars I named would ever play MLS minute one.

The disease had spread to Vancouver.

2011 North American Soccer League/Major League Soccer

FC Edmonton

Montreal Impact

Toronto FC

Vancouver Whitecaps

Name

Mins

Name

Mins

Name

Mins

Name

Mins

Cox, Michael

743

Agourram, Reda

379

Attakora, Nana

373

Davies, Philippe

0

Craig, Paul

544

Gatti, Simon

1953

Cann, Adrian

988

Dunfield, Terry

928

Duberry, Andre

151

Gerba, Ali

833

Cordon, Oscar

144

Harmse, Kevin

126

Hamilton, Paul

2414

Ilcu, Mircea

317

de Guzman, Julian

1325

Teibert, Russell

503

Jonke, John

1478

Mayard, Pierre-Rudolph

305

De Rosario, Dwayne

180

Kooy, Chris

2430

Pizzolitto, Nevio

1261

Dunfield, Terry

263

Lam, Sam

376

Ribeiro, Antonio

758

Henry, Doneil

503

Lemire, Chris

825

Terminesi, Marco

64

Makubuya, Keith

45

Monsalve, David

90

Morgan, Ashtone

903

Oppong, Dominic

1723

Stinson, Matt

675

Porter, Kyle

1699

Zavarise, Gianluca

569

Rago, Antonio

2318

Saiko, Shaun

2168

Saler, Niko

450

Semenets, Alex

377

Sidra, Eddy

515

Suprenant, Alex

1603

Yamada, Kyle

1417

Subtotal

21321

5870

5968

1557

Total Canadian domestic minutes: 34778

In 2011 FC Edmonton joined the competition and as a result we saw the number of Canadian domestic minutes rise to 34,778, the best since 2007. Since Edmonton accounted for 21,321, or 61.3%, of those minutes, I don’t think the other teams get any credit for that. Vancouver, in its first MLS season, gave Canadians a total of 1,557 minutes. 1,557?! From a team that took almost ten times as many to championships in 2006 and 2008? What the hell is this? But of course the 2011 Whitecaps were probably the worst team in the league so at least it was worth it. Sure, Edwini-Bonsu got cut without a serious opportunity (Joe Cannon tweeted his surprise that the Whitecaps had cut a player he’d never heard of before hastily deleting it[6]), Kyle Porter was nickel-and-dimed out of town, Terry Dunfield was traded mid-season for nothing, no Residency guys apart from Russell Teibert got a chance, and Philippe Davies got zero minutes, even in the nothing games at the end of the year, but at least the Whitecaps gave valuable development to Peter Vagenas, John Thorrington, I can’t even keep talking about this it still makes me so furious. Teibert was unlucky, starting off gangbusters then showing everybody why you shouldn’t bike in flip-flops, but for the rest there was no excuse Tom Soehn could have offered that would be sufficient.

Edmonton also stank, but they made the playoffs (briefly) because pretty much everyone in the NASL did that year. They loaded up on Canadians to a degree unheard of these days and reminiscent of the old Toronto Lynx, and for pretty much the same reason: they were cheap. Look at all those AMSL guys! Actually, many of them were okay, which is why the Eddies managed respectability (and Edmonton Scottish today terrifies the amateur ranks). I still have fond memories of Chris Kooy, John Jonke had his uses at centre back, and Dominic Oppong was a decent tough-as-nails motherfucker of a central player as long as you didn’t ask him to do too much. In the old days, with a few other second division teams kicking around, those players would have landed somewhere. Instead, when Edmonton moved them on they had nowhere to go.

As for Toronto, they get some credit for a poor Canadian season: Dwayne De Rosario set fires in lockers until the FCs finally traded him, Julian de Guzman was hurt much of the time and lousy for the rest of it, Nicholas Lindsay was allowed access to a snowmobile, and Adrian Cann was physically falling apart like a counterfeit Chinese Frankenstein’s monster. Still, they did so little with the decent Oscar Cordon and the never-even-got-a-chance-to-find-out-if-he-was-decent Keith Makubuya, preferring to drag in Americans because this is MLS and this is what you do dammit.

But oh, Montreal. Wave the carrot of MLS and they’re throwing out Canadians left, right, and centre. Placentino retired. Gerba, only partially for health reasons, played fewer than 900 minutes. Young players like Mircea Ilcu, Pierre-Rudolph Mayard, and Reda Agourram got short stints but nothing more than that. All told Montreal lost almost 5,000 Canadian minutes, the biggest drop for a Canadian team in half a decade. The Impact loaded up with every foreigner on whom they could physically lay hands, and the pre-season title favourites were rewarded for this sell-out by missing the NASL playoffs altogether, an astonishing achievement in a league where six of eight teams qualified and one of the others was the 2011 Atlanta Silverbacks. But it’s a good thing Montreal dumped half their Canadians from 2010 to 2011, and then dumped every single one of the rest from 2011 to 2012, because they didn’t make the playoffs either of those seasons. Imports win you games? Really? After the examples of Vancouver and Toronto FC that’s what the Impact were going with? Of course it was, they were heading into MLS, and if you haven’t figured out the pattern by now you’re not going to.

2012 North American Soccer League/Major League Soccer

FC Edmonton

Montreal Impact

Toronto FC

Vancouver Whitecaps

Name

Mins

Name

Mins

Name

Mins

Name

Mins

Caceros, Kenny

1422

Bernier, Patrice

2194

Cann, Adrian

735

Clarke, Caleb

15

Cox, Michael

919

Ouimette, Karl

66

de Guzman, Julian

1028

Teibert, Russell

117

Craig, Paul

668

Sutton, Greg

24

Dunfield, Terry

2493

Gardner, Dino

10

Henry, Doneil

1139

Gigolaj, Elvir

172

Makubuya, Keith

10

Hamilton, Paul

2024

Morgan, Ashtone

2528

Kooy, Chris

1816

Stinson, Matt

89

Lam, Matt

1215

Lassonde, Fabrice

555

Misiewicz, Michel

360

Monsalve, David

90

Porter, Kyle

1772

Rago, Antonio

1942

Saiko, Shaun

1816

Sememets, Alex

17

Smits, John

630

Subtotal

16276

2284

8022

132

Total Canadian domestic minutes: 26776

In 2012 the Whitecaps wrote their names in the pages of infamy forever by giving Canadians one hundred and thirty-two regular season minutes, a record I pray on bended knee will never, ever be bested. For that sell-out of their entire country they managed to sneak into the playoffs by a fluke and go out to the Los Angeles Galaxy with a bit of dignity while losing yet another Voyageurs Cup final, coming up short in the Cascadia Cup, and generally gassing a season without even player development to show for it. I don’t even have anything to say about that anymore; it is beyond comment, it is the nadir of everything this alleged “promotion” to Major League Soccer has meant for the Canadian game.

Edmonton had dumped a bunch of the metro-league players and gone down to 16,276 domestic minutes, still over 60% better (on a per game basis) than any Canadian MLS team has ever done. They missed the playoffs, of course, because they were harder to get into, but that had little to do with their Canadians, most of whom were excellent (Saiko, Hamilton), quite good (Porter, Rago, Smits, Kooy), or not around long enough to make a difference. Matt Lam was a disappointment, but he also got a lot of shots off and his fate was probably determined more by contract problems than actual incompetence. And Toronto actually had a good Canadian year, by MLS standards, thanks to full-timers Dunfield and Morgan and semi-regulars de Guzman and Henry.

No, it’s the Montreal Impact who were charming the nation in 2011, signing Patrice Bernier out of Norway and giving a total of 90 minutes to any other Canadian, 24 of which were a farewell to Greg Sutton. Better than Vancouver, obviously, at least Montreal had a local lad they were willing to show some loyalty to, but still a shocking disappointment, even considering that Montreal had long been the least domestically-focused of the second division Canadian teams. I say “disappointment”; in fact I think we all saw it coming.

Most recently, in 2013, the Whitecaps disgraced themselves a bit less than usual with 1,865 minutes (all but 90 to Teibert, and those 90 forced by a suspension to Jordan Harvey). Montreal did better with 3,324 minutes (2,474 to Bernier). And Toronto, of course, ran out six Canadians, with three breaking 1,500 minutes, and ruled the Canadian roost once again. Sure, the FCs weren’t very good, but neither were the Whitecaps and the Impact were plunging so fast when the playoffs started NASA counted it as a re-entry. So at least this near-abandonment of Canadian players is all worthwhile because now our MLS teams are so competitive.

Even FC Edmonton lost momentum, with only 9,011 minutes going to Canadians. Not all of it was their fault (an injury to Michael Cox and intermittent hurts and suspensions for Eddie Edward) but a lot of it was (the summary execution of the excellent Paul Hamilton and Shaun Saiko). They did at least try to load up on Canadians in the second half of the season, though Gagandeep Dosanjh got injured and Anthony Adur remained Anthony Adur, but this did not stop the team, and its Canadian coaching team led by Colin Miller, from facing criticism from fans for overly favouring foreign players. That said, as they played fewer games than any other team in our spreadsheet Edmonton’s 346.6 Canadian minutes per game, while extremely poor for the second division, is not far behind the best season ever in MLS (2009 Toronto FC, 357.9 Canadian minutes per game). The hope is that, with Ottawa Fury moving up to the NASL for 2014, Edmonton and Ottawa can bounce Canadian reclamation projects off each other in the way that the Impact, Lynx, and Whitecaps once did to some success.

The following table will summarize the decade in Canadian domestic players better than my thousands of grief-stricken words ever could.

USL A-League/First Division/USSF D2/NASL

Major League Soccer

Games

Calgary

Edmonton

Montreal

Toronto

Vancouver

Games

Montreal

Toronto

Vancouver

Total

2004

28

19159

22135

18777

18384

25224

103707

2005

28

17182

20257

21591

59058

2006

28

13962

21704

13250

48944

2007

28

13121

12748

30

9093

35020

2008

30

11984

14195

30

6606

32845

2009

30

10244

12996

30

10736

34036

2010

30

10614

9603

30

9236

29513

2011

28

21321

5870

34

5968

1557

34778

2012

28

16276

34

2284

8022

132

26776

2013

26

9011

34

3324

5804

1865

20064

To illustrate the decline in a different way, here is a graph showing the number of Canadian domestic minutes per game. This is just the total number of Canadian minutes from each team in a given season, divided by the total number of games played by the teams that season. The straight line is a linear illustration of the horrific fall.

The number of Canadian domestic minutes per game has been declining, almost without exception, since 2004. This is fair enough, as the silver generation which brought us the 2000 Gold Cup retired and the quality of Canadian players at home deteriorated. But the biggest drops correlated with MLS. When Toronto FC entered MLS and sent the Lynx to PDL in 2007, almost 180 Canadian domestic minutes per game (two full-time players!) was lost. If you count Vancouver’s 2010, where they were signing the likes of Cody Arnoux and Willis Forko thinking that would in some way help, or 2011 when Montreal was pulling the same tricks to an even greater degree, you can see what a debacle the self-appointed “first” division has made of Canadian content. In fact, so calamitous was the impending arrival of Montreal and the continued deterioration of Vancouver in MLS that in spite of adding over 21,000 Canadian domestic minutes with the arrival of FC Edmonton 2011 still saw a decline in Canadian domestic minutes per game (from 327.9 to 280.5). Only in 2009, buoyed by Toronto FC’s best season ever for Canadian content combined with a still-strong Montreal and Vancouver, did the number of Canadian domestic minutes per game slightly, and temporarily, rise from the season before.

In conclusion: if Don Garber thinks that Major League Soccer is going to steer Canada into a World Cup I’m at a loss to think how. It might not be the league’s fault, but Canadians simply don’t play in this country compared to before MLS came along.

Of course MLS cannot take all the blame. Canadian minutes had been declining, a few thousand at a time, since I was able to begin tracking this. But from 2007 to 2009 Vancouver had found a pretty stable level of about 13,000 Canadian minutes per year, many in young players, until 2010 when they were loading up for MLS and the number plunged. Montreal was averaging almost 11,000 Canadian minutes from 2008 to 2010, generally veterans but with a few kids, until 2011 when they were loading up for MLS and the number plunged. And not to belabour the point but those were good teams, with each side beating Toronto FC head-to-head. Neither has shown any sign of improving, with the Impact getting the large bulk of their Canadian minutes these days through Patrice Bernier and the Whitecaps through Russell Teibert. Squad players are, as a rule, imports: this was not the case in the second division, when you could count on Sita-Taty Matondos, Davey Morrises, and Pat Leducs getting utility minutes.

We’re told that the biggest impact of MLS will be in youth development but there’s nothing stopping a Canadian second division team from running a professional academy of their own (Edmonton does and the Whitecaps did). Indeed, it was the Whitecaps Residency which promised the beginnings of a fine team in the early 2010s, until its elite players were scattered to the five winds for the sake of mediocre, foreign journeymen. The Whitecaps U-18s reached the USL PDL semi-final in 2008, and of the starting eleven in the final match six (Randy Edwini-Bonsu, Ethan Gage, Gagandeep Dosanjh, Philippe Davies, Antonio Rago, Simon Thomas)[7] remain active professionally. These players have a combined zero MLS minutes.

So what’s the solution? Raise the Canadian quota in Major League Soccer? As the example of Toronto FC shows, this would inevitably lead to an increase in Canadian minutes. But setting rules that teams will begrudging follow with a host of Gabe Galas and Tyler Hemmings is no long-term solution: the dud players are signed half-heartedly, they turn out to be duds, they are released equally half-heartedly and replaced with others, it is an old story. This may get more minutes but the minutes wouldn’t be very good.

A good step would be to limit the existing Canadian quota so it applies only to those players who can actually play for the Canadian men’s national team. In this way Canadian-eligible talent would regain their advantage over the likes of Alain Rochat and Gershon Koffie with the right paperwork but no prospect of ever playing for Canada. Both Rochat and Koffie are fine players, that’s not the point; the point is that their excellence will never be relevant to the national team we are hopefully trying to develop.

The only meaningful change can be one of attitude. I hope we are beginning to see this in the Carl Robinson-run Vancouver Whitecaps: Residency players hopefully getting a sincere chance in the first team. Augment them with a few U-23s in the Brett Levis mold and we might be getting somewhere, if only in a few years time. Canada’s MLS teams need to resist the inclination to prioritize the draftee over the homegrown player: the drafted guy is 21 and comes with a big article from south of the border, the homegrown guy is 18 and only the nerds have ever heard of him, the drafted guy gets all the minutes, the homegrown guy is released when he’s 20 years old. It’s an old story, but one resulting from short-sightedness. And when teams are splashing millions upon millions of dollars for designated players whose profile outweighs their ability, why not make them Canadian? There are only a few out there, of course, but I hope Toronto at least called Atiba Hutchinson before ringing Michael Bradley, that Simeon Jackson’s agent heard about the open vault before Jermaine Defoe’s. That sort of thing can make a real difference.

There’s no reason why Canada’s MLS teams couldn’t build Canadian rosters like the old days. They might have to butt heads with the American-oriented MLS front office to do it, but at minimum the effort must be made if we want to return to even the then-seemingly-lowly, now almost idyllic days of 2004.

A rare digression, if you like, from how annoyed I am with Major League Soccer to how its Canadian teams are doing with their homegrown players. It’s very early days yet, it’ll take years before we can expect concrete results from any MLS homegrown player, but with the Canadian men’s national team in the headlines for all the wrong reasons after going winless in two tries against Mauritania I thought it interesting to have an early look at what the three Canadian teams have done to date.

As the Canadian club with the longest history in Major League Soccer Toronto FC is unsurprisingly the Canadian leader in homegrown player signings. They have signed eight players to MLS homegrown contracts: Doneil Henry, Ashtone Morgan, Nicholas Lindsay, Oscar Cordon, Keith Makubuya, Matt Stinson, Quillan Roberts, and Manuel Aparicio[1]. As the homegrown player rule was introduced only in 2009 Toronto can claim other “spiritual” homegrowns, most notably Nana Attakora, who will not be counted here but should not be forgotten. Jonathan Osorio, who is not a Toronto FC Academy graduate, is not counted but is as close to a homegrown player as you can get without being one.

Four (Henry, Morgan, Roberts, and Aparicio) remain with Toronto, for 50.00%. This is the same proportion that remains in MLS.

Three (Henry, Morgan, and Stinson) have made a senior international appearance for Canada, for 37.50%.

In their Major League Soccer history the Vancouver Whitecaps have signed seven homegrown players to MLS contracts: Philippe Davies, Nizar Khalfan, Russell Teibert, Bryan Sylvestre, Bryce Alderson, Caleb Clarke, and Sam Adekugbe.

Five (Davies, Teibert, Alderson, Clarke, and Adekugbe) are Canadian, for 71.43%*.

Four (Teibert, Alderson, Clarke, and Adekugbe) remain with the Whitecaps, for 57.14%. This is the same proportion that remains in MLS.

One (Clarke) is British Columbian, for 14.23%.

One (Teibert) has made a senior international appearance for Canada, for 14.23%.

For purpose of comparison, the final second division Whitecaps team in 2010 included nine Canadian players (Davies, Teibert, Kyle Porter, Luca Bellisomo, Randy Edwini-Bonsu, Alex Elliott, Ethan Gage, Alex Semenets, and Simon Thomas) who were alumni of the Whitecaps Residency. Of these, seven (Davies, Teibert, Porter, Bellisomo, Edwini-Bonsu, Gage, Semenets, and Thomas) could have counted as homegrown players were it MLS, and of those seven three (Bellisomo, Gage, and Thomas) were British Columbian. Five (Davies, Teibert, Porter, Edwini-Bonsu, and Thomas) have made senior international appearances; only Teibert did so without leaving the Whitecaps (Thomas capped after rejoining the Whitecaps from a stint in England). Former international Martin Nash would arguably also be considered homegrown, as he came up through the Vancouver 86ers. That 2010 Whitecaps team was not very strong but still reached the USSF D2 league semi-finals and drew Toronto FC in both their Voyageurs Cup meetings.

The Montreal Impact are only in their second Major League Soccer season and have the youngest academy of the three MLS teams, so their homegrown list is proportionately light. The Impact have signed five players to MLS homegrown contracts: Karl Ouimette, Wandrille Lefevre, Maxim Tissot, Maxime Crepeau, and Zakaria Messoudi.

Four (Ouimette, Tissot, Crepeau, and Messoudi) are Canadian†, for 80.00%. Each of these four is also from Quebec.

All five remain in MLS, and all five remain with the Montreal Impact, for 100.00%.

None have yet made a senior international appearance.

Now, I mean to draw no conclusions. But it’s worth noting that, first of all, the Whitecaps are the only Canadian MLS team to sign multiple non-Canadians as homegrown players. If you count Montreal’s Lefevre as Canadian, which you very well could, the Whitecaps are the only team to sign a homegrown foreigner at all.

Secondly, the Whitecaps distantly trail their in signing players from their home province. The Whitecaps Residency has produced a number of interesting British Columbian players in recent years including Ben Fisk, Callum Irving, Brody Huitema, and Daniel Stanese, but as yet only Caleb Clarke has joined the MLS roster. Both marks compare very badly to Vancouver’s second-division history, of which we Whitecaps supporters have for so long been proud. This is partially because of MLS territory restrictions which limit how teams may recruit for their academies, but it’s funny that Vancouver has signed two Ontarians (Teibert and Alderson) and a Quebecker (Davies) versus one British Columbian.

Thirdly, nobody can claim a clear lead in internationals generated so far. Toronto benefits from having two more seasons of homegrown player rules under their belt, and of their three homegrown internationals one (Stinson) made only a single cap and seems likely to stay there. Vancouver probably would have gotten a second international were Adekugbe’s passport sorted out, and Montreal has the youngest batch of players. But look at the internationals Vancouver could have had merely by standing pat on their 2010 roster and feel your head spin. Toronto’s record would improve if we could count Attakora and Osorio, and neither Vancouver nor Montreal have equivalents.

As a Whitecaps fan I am concerned with a lack of patience, a lack of Canadianness, and particularly a lack of British Columbians coming up through our ranks. It’s not as though this policy has been met with a tonne of first team success, after all, and we recently did quite well with more homegrown Canadians, more locals, and fewer resources in a league not so much worse than MLS that it justifies throwing away a successful strategy. It’s very early so I am by no means panicking, but it’s nice to know our current position.

Tomorrow I am going to spend pretty much all day on the go so I won’t have time to genuflect on Wednesday’s Voyageurs Cup final against the Montreal Impact. I therefore do so now.

Not often discussed in Vancouver is what a justification the Montreal – Philadelphia game was for Martin Rennie’s tactics. The Impact hammered the Union, going up a leisurely 3-1 in the first half and plinking home a couple more goals while Philadelphia went all-out trying to get back into it, winning 5-3 in an utterly one-sided affair.

It made Rennie look brilliant. The Union and the Whitecaps are both basically respectable teams; I think Vancouver just has the legs on Philadelphia but it’s hardly clear. Philadelphia ran with Montreal at Stade Saputo and got smoked. Vancouver sat back, tried to absorb pressure, and succeeded. Not just in terms of the scoreline but in shots as well.

When the Whitecaps limited Montreal to two shots on target last Wednesday, that was the fewest shots the Impact managed at home since June 27, 2012 against Toronto FC. It wasn’t just that Montreal was shooting inaccurately, though that helped: their ten shots directed was the fewest at home since September 22 since March 16 (also Toronto; what is it with Impact shooters and Canadian teams?) and one of only four such games in their MLS history (including Voyageurs Cup). It was a first-class defensive performance in Montreal, one which was achieved entirely without Lee Young-pyo or Jun Marques Davidson, resting them and others up for a Portland game that weekend they should have won.

Teams which try to slug it out with the Impact at Stade Saputo come to bad ends. Real Salt Lake played a good game and got unlucky; the rest were meh at best going back to late 2012. Had the Whitecaps opened the offense and gone for the vital away goal the odds were against them (Montreal’s home record in games with 9 or more combined SoG since June 2012: 7W-1D-2L, losses both flukes, wins over New York, San Jose, Toronto, New York again, Chicago, fluke over Salt Lake, and Philadelphia). Obviously a 1-1 draw would have been good, a fluke victory fantastic, but more likely the Whitecaps would have lost 1-0 or 2-1 and come home in trouble. If you can choose between a 30% chance of a good result and a probability of a very-nearly-as-good result, I’d go for the latter. So did Martin Rennie.

(Pardon me while I have a strange interlude. This brings me about to a minor nit-pick. In the Canadian Championship the away goals rule still applies in extra time. So let’s say Vancouver and Montreal draw 0-0 after 90 minutes Wednesday. They go to extra time, each team scores once, Montreal wins 1-1 aet. This seems stupid to me, as it gives an advantage to the team playing away in the second leg. Montreal may get thirty “extra” minutes for their goals to be worth more Wednesday than Vancouver could at Stade Saputo. It’s unbalanced. We had the same problem a couple of years ago when Ali Gerba nearly won it for Montreal by tying it. This advantage is needless and easily dispensed with by stating that the away goals rule does not apply in extra time. Like the Rain Game, it seems like a minor issue until it decides a championship.)

On Twitter this morning I was musing about the Montreal Impact’s percentages. Now that Troy Perkins got ventilated by Philadelphia on the weekend there’s nothing really outrageous. However, all their percentages are just a hair above last year’s mean. For example, they have 42.75% of their shots directed landing on target (2012 MLS average 34.44%), 33.90% of their shots on target becoming goals (2012 MLS 29.76%), and a save percentage of 73.08% (2012 MLS 70.24%). It’s not a lot and some is doubtless skill (hello Marco di Vaio). But some of that is luck, and while none of the numbers are individually outrageous it’s all a few goals here and there making the Impact look just a little bit better than they are.

I think this may show up most on the road. So far the Impact are a damned good road team in 2013: a win at Portland and a commendable draw at San Jose gives them two Cup-winning road results against west coast teams who are better than the Whitecaps. But in Portland the Impact got 66.67% of their shots directed on target (fuck off) and in San Jose they managed 83.33% (fuck off!!!). Neither Portland nor San Jose obviously undercount shots directed by teams visiting their stadiums: those numbers are probably approximately legit, and indicate that for whatever reason in those big wins Montreal was shooting more accurately than it is possible to maintain. Again, Montreal is a good team, they play well away, they will be a stiff test for Vancouver, they just don’t play as well as their impressive record would suggest.

Vancouver’s big advantage will be in fatigue. As has abundantly been discussed, the Impact played at home on Saturday whereas the Whitecaps had an off week. The Impact are traveling from Montreal to Vancouver; there are plenty of direct commercial flights, annoyingly, but that’s still three time zones worth of jet lag. The Whitecaps will, of course, have been home and comfortable for almost two weeks by game time. This is not a decisive advantage (again, the Impact did well in one test of travel-and-short-rest this year) but it’s another factor in the Whitecaps’ favour.

On Saturday the Impact ran their best horses into the ground. Bernier, Nesta, Felipe, and Ferrari all did the 90 and are all key players who are aging, fresh off injury, perpetually faintly unfit, or all three. Di Vaio went 85 minutes. Brovsky did 77 minutes with his face smashed in like a chocolate orange. That’s a tough turnaround for these players both physically and psychologically. Imagine Nesta, 37 years old, having spent most of his career on Serie A’s hallowed turfs, just recovered from a groin injury, and facing both the physical barrier of big minutes twice in a week and the psychological problem with artificial turf. I almost expect him not to play.

Those better versed in soccer psychology than I may be able to predict whether we’ll see the Whitecaps go other the way: overprepare, get wind-up because of the long period to look at one massive challenge, particularly straight off a hardly-relaxing Portland draw. I’m sure if the Whitecaps do lose, somebody will make this point after the fact. Soccer psychologists are a lot like message board doctors.

My prediction in last Wednesday’s Two Fat Bastards was Vancouver 2, Montreal 1. I’ve seen nothing since that makes me change my mind. The Whitecaps should have a slight advantage. They’re better-rested. They’re at home. Montreal and Vancouver have identical SoG/90 differentials so far this year of +0.636 and their differentials have been in the same range for the past month. They’ve both played six home games and five on the road. In skill terms they are extraordinarily evenly matched, to a degree that makes me want to lie down with a gin and tonic and a cold towel on my forehead. So home field and long rest should prove decisive for Vancouver, unless of course they don’t. And there are two Quebec linesmen for Wednesday (Belleau and Gamache)[1]; what will that mean? Probably nothing, unless of course it does. No result, other than a blowout, would be an upset worthy of the name. Montreal winning by a couple, Vancouver winning by a couple, a close game, away goals, penalties… if you’re betting on this game you are a moron.